Cupcake day

 I realized that I have been ignoring my baking lately, which is not good, because it is something I enjoy.  So I made up for that today, as you can see above.

First though, I made Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes.  How could I possible resist anything with a name like that?  The first step is to make a topping mixture of egg, brown sugar and chocolate chips.

The dough itself is quite stiff and much more like, well, chocolate chip cookie dough than regular cupcake dough.

 The dough bakes for 15 minutes (and it really helps if you actually set the time instead of just thinking about it.) Mine ended up being a bit overdone.  You take them out and give them each 2 tablespoons of topping, and bake them an additional 10 minutes.

Here they are out of the pan.  I found them quite good, totally different from most cupcakes.  They taste best fresh out of the oven, for sure.  Will try warming them up before I eat the next one.

That didn't seem like enough so I made a batch of plain yellow cupcakes.

I then made lemon frosting for them, which Norbert said was "very lemony".  The first try was too liquidy, (see above).

So I added even more powdered sugar and was able to pipe it.

Then I decorated them a bit, and they are ready to eat!

Yesterday Lucas started working at the Obi store in Hückelhoven (close to us), although they weren't supposed to start until Monday.  It is a HUGE store.  Yesterday and today they unloaded and carried in all of the shelving for the store.  Someone else will install it over the weekend and on Monday they start loading the shelves.  Should take about 4 weeks!

He is very happy with his job, likes the work and the people.  He is very motivated, so we are all happy.

The bad news is that we are still having winter weather.  Another dusting of snow yesterday and more this weekend.  Enough already! 

Looking forward to our trip to the US next week with hopefully nicer weather!

Susan

Baking and such

Actually all I meant to do was to clean out the cupboard with the baking supplies.  It tends to get out of control very quickly.  But as so often happens, on thing leads to another.

In this case, 2.5 bags of dried cranberries led me to find a muffin recipe.  Now I have 1.5 bags of dried cranberries, but the muffins have received the Lucas seal of approval.

I also made a batch of dried mix for a substitute for cream of ... soup.  I can no longer buy Cream of Mushroom soup here, and the first substitute I tried wasn't terribly satisfactory.

Then I remember the seven huge sweet potatoes cluttering up the counter.  We already had eaten several, baked, for dinner one night.  I left three out for dinner tomorrow, and put the remaining four in the microwave while I continued to tidy.

Once out of the microwave and having cooled a bit, I peeled them and threw the chunks into a bowl.

 These guys are still awaiting their destiny.

Then I pulled out the trusty heavy duty potato masher and went at it.

I ended up with a three-cup container of sweet potato puree for a sweet potato pudding, and five containers with 1/2 cup each, for muffins.

These are the three for Monday's dinner.

Things have been changing around here so much that I have definitely gotten out of my usual routine.  But now that Lucas has settled down in his job, I can get back into my routine, or rather, into a new one.  The cycling season has started up again, so there will be more work again, but one of the joys of working from home is being able to take the laptop into the kitchen and typing alternately with baking or cooking.......

Susan